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I remember as a senior in high school and applying to all of these different colleges from UCF to UF to FSU to UM. I went to a predominantly white school and all of the different colleges who visited were from those schools. Never did I witness a college recruiter from an HBCU step on West Orange’s school grounds. I feel like that is why many of my classmates didn’t even know about FAMU. It was like HBCUs weren’t even an option for the students of FAMU.

I got into all of my choices but I didn’t feel as if I was extremely happy. I wasn’t that senior who waited until Valentine’s Day to hear back from UF. It wasn’t a place of happiness. It wasn’t home.

Somehow and someway, my mom led me to apply to FAMU for their pharmacy program and I did. I got in. It still didn’t hit me that I was going to leave the area that I had called home my whole life and that I was going to leave the friends that I had gone to school with my whole life.

Then, I got to Florida A&M University.

It was a huge surprise to be in a classroom where I was actually challenged and not the only African American child there. It was even more shell shocking that everyone in my classes was smart. I don’t mean just smart smart, but ridiculously smart. All I ever knew before was being the only African American girl in the gifted classroom and all of the AP classes (excluding Marsee). That was never an issue for me but it definitely made me stick out like a sore thumb. It felt so relieving that I had people who looked like me in my classes who were trying to truly succeed.

It’s important to have these options not only because they were the only ones available to our ancestors who were able to get an education but because they are for some people the only option. It is a chance to be in a school where you are not just a number but a person with a name. The professors actually personally care and don’t mind taking the time out with you to help you whether it be with academic issues or sometimes to just talk.

I never felt such a deep love for a school until I reached the highest of seven hills. It has shaped me as a person so much. I don’t know how to greet someone without starting off with Greetings and humble salutations, my name is Kara Glover, a first year Doctor of Pharmacy candidate from Orlando, FL.

HBCUs instill a sense of pride and love like no other school. It shows you how to support one another just because. It instills in you to speak up and speak out for the ones who can’t. It teaches you how to dance in the stands whether or not anyone is looking. It teaches you that as soon as something goes down, it will spread from the Village down to the Palmettos in less than a minute.